A NEWBORN baby boy is recovering in a Chinese hospital after he was flushed down a toilet and then recused from a sewage pipe by firefighters.

The baby, was found lodged below a squat toilet, was freed from a sewage pipe reportedly just 10cm (three inches) in diameter.

During the dramatic rescue, workers sawed out an L-shaped section and took it to a nearby hospital before doctors delicately dismantled the pipe to free the cocooned baby, who greeted his saviours with cries.

The boy, who had a low heart rate and minor abrasions on his head and limbs, is mostly unhurt according to the province's official news site Zhejiang Online.

Police are now treating the case as an attempted homicide, and are looking for the mother and anyone else involved in the incident.

The abandoned newborn baby boy was lodged in a sewage pipe

A tenant heard the baby's sounds in the public restroom of a residential building in the wealthy coastal Zhejiang province.

From the time he was found until when he was taken out, the baby was stuck in the pipe for at least two hours.

The child - named Baby No. 59 from the number of his hospital incubator - has now been reported safe and healthy, and news of the rescue has prompted an outpouring from strangers who came to the hospital with diapers, baby clothes, powdered milk and offers to adopt the child.

The news triggered hundreds of thousands of comments on China's popular social media site Weibo, with users expressing outrage at those who presumably abandoned him.

"Can these people be called human beings? The animal to human ratio among the grown-ups is rising inexorably," one user posted.

The baby sleeps in hospital while recovering from its ordeal

Seeing the little one wriggling and groaning as the pipe was torn apart bit by bit wrings my heart

"Seeing the little one wriggling and groaning as the pipe was torn apart bit by bit wrings my heart," another user added.

The landlord of the building said that it was unlikely the birth took place in the toilet room because there was no evidence of blood and she was not aware of any recent pregnancies among her tenants.

Despites the offers to adopt Baby No. 59, a doctor at the hospital said the boy would be handed over to social services if his parents do not show up to claim him, according to reports.

There are frequent reports in Chinese media of babies being abandoned, often shortly after birth, a problem attributed variously to young mothers unaware they were pregnant, the birth of an unwanted girl in a society which puts greater value on boys or China's strict family planning rules.

Click play below to watch the incredible rescue of a baby boy who was flushed down a toilet in China